Constitutional text - Chapter Tree - Our Community life

IV- what are some of the rneans to achieve this?
V- what are some "models" of religious cornmunities?
This should establish the context within which our own Constitutions
and Norrns on Corrnnunity Life can be more easily understoodand
our own reflections can be better directed and clarified.
..
--- I ---
The desire and concern for "corrnmmity" that has ernerged so strongly
in the last few decades is not something particular to the Church
orto religious life. It is the result of the convergence of sociological,
technological, cultural, philosophical, psychological
and theological insights and forces. The following ideas, certainly
in very simplified form, rnay help in understanding this. It would
be good if each reader added his own insight in trying to recreate
the atmosphere that has given rise to the renewed interest in corn­
ITllility.
1. Technical advances, urbanization, and industrialization have
created greater mobility, uprootedness and irnpersonalism,
giving the persona sense of alienation, isolation, helplessness
and ineffectiveness vis à vis the machinery of
power, of production, of social control
but technical advances have also allowed the world to becorne
more conscious of itself as a "global village", stirring
a greater sense of co-responsibility, making people aware
of the need for all people to unite and cooperate in the
struggle for peace, for justice, and perhaps even for
survival. There is the desire and movernent to create
"the European corrnmmity", "the African colTllTll..l11ity" and even
the "world corrununity."
MJst directly influenced by these forces are the "corrnnunities"
that are the interest of the sociologists and the
anthropologists:
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